Sharing
Meta AI: personal chats in a public feed
In June 2025 it emerged that the public feed of the Meta AI app contained many conversations users had evidently not meant for the public: legal and medical questions, home addresses, CVs.
Meta released its standalone Meta AI app on 29 April 2025; according to Appfigures, it had been downloaded 6.5 million times by June. The app has a feed called Discover, where users can publish their conversations with the AI. To do so, they tap the share button and then post from a preview screen. Along the way, the app did not show users what their privacy settings were or where the post would appear.
On 12 June 2025 TechCrunch reported that the feed contained many conversations users had evidently not meant to make public. One user asked whether relatives could be arrested because of their closeness to white-collar crimes; another wanted help with tax evasion, or wrote a character reference for an employee in legal trouble, with the employee's full name. There were medical questions and CVs, and not just text but voice recordings of the questions too. A security expert found home addresses and sensitive details of court cases. Anyone who had logged in with a public Instagram account had their searches made public as well.
Meta does not publish conversations by default. A spokesperson said posting is a multi-step process, deliberately designed to add friction. After the reports, the company added a warning next to the post button: posted prompts are public and visible to everyone, Meta may suggest them in its other apps, so users should avoid sharing personal or sensitive information. The warning only appears on the first share.
What can we learn from it?
In an AI app, the share button does not always mean what it means in everyday language: here the conversation went not to a friend but to anyone. When an app is a chatbot and a social network at once, the line blurs easily. For professional questions, choose an AI tool without a public feed, and before sharing anything, check exactly who will see it. For passing on client material, stick to the closed channels you already trust.
Sources
- TechCrunch: The Meta AI app is a privacy disaster
- Engadget: Meta warns users to 'avoid sharing personal or sensitive information' in its AI app
This article is based on the public sources listed. If you find a mistake, write to us: [email protected]